of Montreal
Lousy with Sylvianbriar

THE REVIEW

What I define as psycho-revival is a "intimistic" (and somewhat "hype") reinterpretation of past genres and styles: they are uprooted from the ground where they were firmly planted and transported to the realm of memories and vision. Kevin Barnes, a native of Athens [Georgia, USA], founder and leader of the decades-long Of Montreal, is an expert in visions; and this latest extremely vivid kaleidoscope of sounds/colors fully confirms it.

"Lousy with Sylvianbriar" is the eidetic and dreamlike memory of childhood, of other dimensions, times, and places: free-form thinking while listening to Bob Dylan and humming Neil Young, traveling through an idealized America as a "place of the mind", with turquoise skies and low-floating cumulus clouds, rustic highways traveled by shiny black Jeeps crossing the verdant central plains; used Buick 4x4s driving along dusty arteries of sleepy counties in the southern states at sunset. And other such amenities. And it's all so well crafted and varied that it could easily turn the candid utopia "metaphysical," thus bestowing the work with that aura of dreamlike, visionary, and almost abstract universalism, which was also (and especially) of the best vintage Dylan.

An operation more cultured than it might seem, at least to a "distracted" listener, hit only by a flood of honey and an almost childlike folly. Besides the lyrics, almost always imbued with an almost innocent grotesque surrealism, there is not much that is truly psychedelic: just a sense of gentle dilation, of disorienting relaxation. Structure and phrasing are those of "roots" indie rock from overseas: folk tradition ("Sirens of Your Toxic Spirit," "Raindrop in My Skull") and country ("Hegira Émigré") rock ("Fugitive Air," "Belle Glade Missionaries") in a delicate lo-fi sauce, with merseybeat elements ("Colossus") and garage ("She Ain't Speakin' Now"); a combination that has rarely been so fortunate.

An artist identity already assertively established by Of Montreal in their numerous previous albums (especially with the equally fantastic "The Gay Parade" from 1999), but it is with this latest effort that the group finally finds the right and well-deserved place within the first orbits of the indie empyrean of the new millennium.